On Monday I shared about an easier way to achieve the goal and hinted at a couple of methods I’m using to get organized planning-wise this year. On Wednesday I referred you to Intentional by Grace and her planning 101 series to help get your calendar organized for 2016. Starting big!
It’s one thing to plan to achieve the goal and to get things on your calendar so as not to miss birthdays, appointments and other important dates. (Starting big!) It’s quite another to actually work towards completing a goal and making those calendar items more easily crossed off as complete. So let’s get small!
Mind mapping the everyday
Have you heard of mind mapping? I stumbled across this website in late December and have seen articles about mind mapping floating around Facebook ever since (funny how Facebook knows what we’ve been looking at to show you posts you may be interested in…)
In very basic terms, mind-mapping is taking an idea or project you’d like to work on, writing it down in the center of a page, and then writing everything you can think of that needs to go into developing that idea around it. Then you break down every surrounding idea even further. It’s like breaking a big project down into steps, then breaking the steps down into smaller steps, then those steps into even smaller steps.
I’ve done this mind mapping technique with a few huge projects to break them down into smaller, more attainable goals, and then broken those goals down into smaller steps and the projects don’t seem so huge or unattainable any more! I’ve also been doing this with everyday tasks that have only a few steps to them, and am extending it to my calendar items for this year.
How does this apply to a mom?
Now that you have all of your important dates, appointments, school obligations and holidays written in your calendar, go back through and look at each item you wrote. For each item ask yourself:
“Do I need to do something to make that appointment, birthday, or holiday successful or special?”
Then, back up a few days on your calendar (or in your planner that you look at daily ~ hint hint!) and write in what task(s) you need to do for that calendar item. Two examples:
- John’s birthday is on April 3rd, I wrote it in the other day when I was writing everything out on my calendar. Today I see it, and on March 26th write a note to ‘purchase and send card for John’s birthday’.
- You’re scheduled to take cookies to the Girl Scout meeting on February 4th. On the grocery shopping day right before that date write a note to check for ingredients. Then write in a date to actually make the cookies!
For a mom, this process is like taking each calendar item you wrote in your 2016 calendar, and thinking about all the little things that go into achieving that one goal – the calendar item – and then planning them out step by step. Its like mind mapping and will help us keep better track of all the little details that go into accomplishing our everyday goals, as well as the really big ones!
Action Steps:
~ Pull out your calendar and planner, work step by step through items on it, filling in what smaller steps can be done to help you be successful for each item.
~ Think of your goals for the year and do a little mind mapping. Then assign anticipated completion dates for each of your steps and add them to your planner!
~ Leave a comment below with your thoughts about mind mapping and the process you use to stay organized with all the details of small and big goals!
*Please note I haven’t gone through all of the articles in the Planning 101 series, so this may be covered in there as well. I’m so excited about getting everything mapped out that I stopped after her first Planning 101 post!
**Also, links provided are for your convenience only and are not affiliate links. They are resources I have used and recommend!
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